Uganda: is culture daunting fight on climate change?
Written by Abet Tonny
Endowed with over 56 tribes untamed and celebrating their different cultures and tongues, Uganda is discernibly a hard to influence the country.
That community with shared values and beliefs generate their own views to interpret unfolding of life is an obvious fact. But these views produced are determinants of how these communities respond to emerging threats and risks. Also, these locally generated views command far-reaching influence on the uptake of (scientific) evidence being communicated with the focus of causing the change of action among members of these communities.
No wonder, Uganda has had a long history fighting negative cultural beliefs that hindered several development moves. This among other factors has slowed down economic development in the country. A clear example is the early 19s event when people associated with AIDS with witchcraft. Culture ushered in this belief. Several thousands of lives perished untimely owing to the ill belief as people refused to seek clinical treatment. Intensified campaigns collectively supported by government, development partners and community stakeholders since gained fairly good influence. More people are testing for HIV and pregnant mothers cooperating to end mother-child transmission of the virus. This is putting HIV/AIDS under appreciable control.
Climate change has since trickled into our country tormenting rural and urban areas with such invariance. Extreme scarcity and unpredictability of rainfall, extra-high temperatures are doing nothing else but causing enormous crop failure and lowering general farm productivity. And when it decides to rain, it's often nothing but a monstrous flood causing landslides, destroying farmlands and disfiguring human settlements in rural and urban areas. In March 2019, severe drought culminated into death of several hundreds of cattle in Nakasongola, Uganda. Also, a terrible flood killed and displaced several people in Uganda's Kampala city this May 2019.
Wetland reclamation is one of the causes of climate change being experienced in the country and globe. Unraveling how wetland reclamation causes climate change, a wetland ecologist Prof. Jos Verhoeven of Netherlands' Utrecht University explains in simple terms.
"Agriculture has been carried out in several types of (former) wetlands for millennia, with crop fields on river floodplain soils and rice fields as major examples." He continues that the intensive agricultural use of drained/reclaimed peatlands (soils with a high deposit of organic matter left by passing water) has been shown to lead to major problems because of the oxidation and subsidence of the peat soil. The ecologist concluded by revealing that this does not only lead to severe carbon dioxide emissions."
Severe carbon dioxide emissions cause an increase in global temperature which in turn leads to the general changes in the climatic condition we are experiencing in our country.
It is clear that climate change is real and is a big threat to our country but our response will determine how much negative impact it throws onto our state of food security, public health, and urban development. The response will, however, be greatly influenced by our cultural and religious alignment.
Gulu incidence
Recently Uganda Radio network reported locals in Gulu, Uganda threatening to gun down environmentalists if they continue hindering them from reclaiming wetland. Wetland encroachment is not unique to Gulu. According to NEMA, though debatable, Uganda loses 2% (751 square kilometers) of wetland annually.
In Acholi cultural belief system, just like in Lango and other tribes in Uganda, climate change is largely attributed to the annoyance of God (gods). Acholi tradition imputes changing the climate to "the annoyance of gods of the land especially Baka, Kijur and Kilak" to inequities of the people. A large number of people -common men align with this concept. This means environmentalists sell conflicting information as they deliver a scientific concept to this community.
A little deeper about our conversation, the elders further revealed that these inequities are acts like killing of innocent people; killing and burying of dogs and killing of tortoises are things that annoy gods enough to withhold rain; cutting papyrus during rainy season; sharpening of grinding stone during day time is also annoying gods to alter the weather and that the world has rotated to drier side of the atmosphere.
It was only the element of the god's annoyance with people who cut papyrus before it's dry season and destroying mountain bamboos that aligned a bit with the concept of environmental safeguard. The gods are perceived to react to the destruction of specific tree and animal species in the land.
Acholi people are some of the few tribes in Uganda who pay very strong allegiance to their culture. Bringing them to appreciate a new concept like the scientific concept of climate change is cracking another hard nut.
To meet our goal of discovering cultural resources available in Acholi culture to mitigate climate change, bamboo and papyrus conservation precipitated. But the next question was, is this really sufficient to respond promptly to heightened threat of climate change in our nation and planet?
And finally to answer whether culture is playing a daunting effect on climate change mitigation fight, please pass your verdict.
About the Author: Abet Tonny is a science communication strategist and writer.
Reference:
1. ScienceDirect: Climate Change, Values, and the cultural cognition thesis
2. Annals of Botany: Agricultural use of wetlands: opportunities and limitations
3. Uganda Radio Network: Gulu residents threaten to gun down environmentalists
4. NTV Uganda: Cattle perish in Nakasongola due to drought
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